


Asylum For The Tranquil

by RestlessRiver



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Asylum, Coming of Age, Dark, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, Haunted House, Lore Exploration, M/M, Post-Canon, Trans Male Character, character exploration, ghost story, introspective, past experiments, post-kh3, short fic, themes of mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26707381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestlessRiver/pseuds/RestlessRiver
Summary: Guilt is a red hot poker jabbed into the eye of someone drowning in an arctic sea. Or at least that is how Ienzo feels overnight when he lays down to sleep with the burning realization of what he did over a decade ago. He can distract himself by day with the efforts of reconstruction, Demyx by his side.  However, light and dark like to blur together in order to cast shadows, and the shadow that the looming asylum casts is a large one can can consume your entire being.This will be a shorter fic, that is hopefully easier for me to write both in style and subject. I am still working on the kinks in Easy Come Easy Go and Consequence.
Relationships: Aeleus/Dilan (Kingdom Hearts), Ansem the Wise | DiZ/Even, Demyx/Ienzo (Kingdom Hearts), Demyx/Zexion (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 5





	Asylum For The Tranquil

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning before we start, this is going to be a heavy fiction. It will be very introspective, delving into the mental state of the apprentices (mostly Ienzo of course) but also the Lord that lead them- Ansem. 
> 
> Also fair warning: I write Ienzo trans so. Yep.

Remorse is an enigmatic phenomena. It is so painful. It is so seering and excruciating. The sensation it gives is bloody and gory- like a knife taken to the capillaries of your soul’s brain. The blade’s edge make’s love to those delicate vessels, killing the organ they serve and leaving the brain strained. The human body cannot differentiate stress from deeper consequences between the stress of starving. Have you ever gained weight seemingly out of nowhere when you were upset for a period of time? Your body was trying to keep you alive. Your body doesn't understand that stress can come from many things, such as the fear or rejection or in our case here- the guilt that remorse wraps up for you like a pretty parcel.

The soul is strong but when it’s brain (or heart as some would say) gets high jacked, the soul turns somehow vengeful and apathetic all at once like a wraith. Nobodies cannot feel remorse because the mind of their soul- their heart- was slain in some way. Either by their own hand when they fell into a deep rabbit hole with a sudden floor to the drop, or by unfortunate consequence- much like a child who in reality was doing what he was told by the only people that took him home after tragedy left him all alone in the world.

-Even if that child made irreparable mistakes when caught in the crossfire of his guardian’s fall from grace.

That aside, we can acknowledge that when the soul of a human becomes brainless, the nobody left in that human’s wake can no longer empathize properly. That is why, when the heart returns, the soul becomes complete, and the human lives once again- well that is why remorse hurts them so much more. It is the delay that causes it. It cures the remorse in the concious’s absence, leaving the taste of it abrasive. It is as if swallowing frigid sea water while you try your best not to drown. You experience remorse and regret as a young thing making their first cardinal mistake- amplified by the decade of time that passed since you actively did the deed.

A decade and no amendments to speak of. That pain so burning it could turn the purgatory of the Catholic faith cold, and yet it is what drives you to stay alive amidst your influx of emotions despite the guilt which floods you like blood returning to a sleeping limb. Impossible to ignore, and alien.

It is the sunlight by which you write your apologies in the day, to people long lost that will never get to know just how truly,  _ deeply _ , sorry you are. 

It is the lamp oil that burns in your lanturn at night while your worn hands work with what living time you have left to make it right- if it can even be made right at all.

Despite all this darkness he had hardly felt as a nobody, the boy had love now. The phenomena he could only define in the most cold and academic of terms in his adolescence, and he now held it next to him in his bed every night. Currently only just now wading into the streams of his twenties, Ienzo couldn’t help but to hold a dark sentiment on his coldest nights. 

‘ _ Best these new petrifying waters of ice pull me out to sea where the world can reclaim me as but a dark blip, than to leave me safe in the warm turquoise waters of his loving arms. An oasis I have not earned- can not earn.’ _

Ienzo rolled his head to the side and gazed into the face of his sleeping partner. The dim haze of the street light intruding on the serene intimacy of their shared bed made it easier to see Demyx’s face in the three a.m. shadow. In the night, behind the closed doors of their bedroom Ienzo could see him as no one else did. Not in the nude, that held no candle to simply seeing the nocturn bare in a much deeper way. His hair, free of pomade and gel, curled around his face like a soft branch of weeping wisteria. When Demyx’s hair was free of fashion, his roots betrayed him. Clearly visible to be brunette instead of blond. Such tiny details, meaningless to others- maybe even comical- that bade Ienzo scoot closer next to the sleeping man. 

The scientist reached up to brush the willowy locks away from his eyes, so that Ienzo could see his face. The soft textures of his skin he knew well. He could remember now by simply looking at him how it felt to hold the man’s cheeks in his own hands. Demyx was remarkably warm but in such an odd and specific way. He was warm and his skin soft, like how it feels to have spent a whole summer day at the beach. The majority of your hours spent in the cold ocean so that you were utterly freezing by the time you emerged from the waves- despite the ruthless sun burning you from overhead. Your skin would be deliciously soft from the salt water but oh so cold. Demyx was the soft sweater you pulled over your bathing suit when evening came, he was the bonfire burning on the shore while you dug your chilly toes in the rapidly cooling sand beneath your seat. He was the hot tea or coffee your camp mate passed around the fire. And he was your camp mate themself, holding you close in your little pup tent while you both fell asleep to the melody of the waves just outside the zippered door. 

Ienzo reaches down now, brushing his fingertips along a cheek in a ghostly touch so that his loved one would stay blissfully asleep. Ienzo bit his lip before whispering freely a sentiment that Demyx would have never allowed when he was awake. 

“You are the last thing in these worlds that I deserve. I cannot even remember all their faces.”

Demyx was robbed of any chance for rebuttal by Ienzo’s blindsiding him in his sleep, but the scientist needed to say it out loud lest it eat him alive. 

Their day come morning would not be a hard one, but it would be long. At dinner, Ienzo offered to make a sleeping aid for Demyx when he warned him that they would be out for most of the day. Ienzo regretted that he did not indulge himself in the sleeping potion as well. In his current sleepless eternity he tossed and turned next to his peaceful lover. He stared at the texture of his lavish bed room ceiling and focused on the micro cracks. Blue eyes flickered over the ceiling’s age worn bumps and crevices, the old castle still bearing some scars from it’s time as Hollow Bastion. 

Choosing now to close his burning eyes, Ienzo willed himself to try and remember their faces once more. The people that transformed from humans to ‘subjects’ under the studies that lead to such great ruin. Ienzo had grasped for the memory countless times, and just like each night before his memory offered him no respite from guilt. 

The man who could weave new worlds out of illusionary ether could not recall the very faucets of the incredibly real world he had helped to kill. Deep in the back of his mind it gave him an odd sense of comfort, as if his memory was punishing him for not using his brain- his conscious- in the most critical moments before the fall. 

The scientist once carried a book that bore the title of his personal hell so very well: Retribution. 

That word, that concept would chase every fibre of his being for the rest of his life.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This fic was going to be a simple one shot delving into Ienzo's mind post KH3, but i began writing it while watching a Loey Lane video and it all spiraled out of control. 
> 
> Here is the video if you are curious:https://youtu.be/W6Ga50UX3XI (Most HAUNTED Abandoned Asylum in the World... Paranormal Vlog).


End file.
